


Choosing Family

by josephina_x



Series: AU of Nicnac’s Any Family You Choose 'Verse [1]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: (again!), (this is all Nicnac’s fault), AU of an AU, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Any Family You Choose AU, Gen, Post-Series, Post-Weirdmageddon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-13
Updated: 2018-12-13
Packaged: 2019-09-17 11:16:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16973598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/josephina_x/pseuds/josephina_x
Summary: Stan Pines is seventeen-years-old, and out on his own in the real world, surviving the best way that he knows how.A twenty-seven-year-old interdimensional portal-jumping Dipper Pines doesnotknow what to do here. Until he does.





	Choosing Family

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nicnac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicnac/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Any Family You Choose](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16891200) by [Nicnac](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicnac/pseuds/Nicnac). 



> Fic: Choosing Family  
> Fandom: Gravity Falls  
> Pairing: n/a  
> Rating: PG-13  
> Spoilers: through the end of the series, and some of the books (Journal #3)  
> Summary: Stan Pines is seventeen-years-old, and out on his own in the real world, surviving the best way that he knows how. 
> 
> A twenty-seven-year-old interdimensional portal-jumping Dipper Pines does _not_ know what to do here. Until he does.  
> Disclaimer: Not mine, not for profit.  
> AN: (...guess who worked on stuff when she should’ve been working on other actual-work stuff…? yup, this person right here x_x;;;;; )
> 
> Well, it’s happened again. I tried to help Nicnac, was a terrible enabler instead, and in the process came up with a fic backstory idea that I kind of wanted to write, that Nicnac then told me to go off and write, and… yeahhhhhhh… we all know by now how _that_ all tends to work out… ^_^;;
> 
> The comment thread in question is [here](https://archiveofourown.org/comments/197376597), but the jist of it all (reproduced and edited + added to below) is:  
> “I now have a headcanon that [Nicnac’s Any Family You Choose] Dipper is the twin to the Mabel from [Nicnac’s] Five Years Older fic. [(And I probably fell into this mental trap because the writing style and POV in both are similar ^_^;; :)] And [this Dipper] is now bouncing around the multiverse after college and some other things, because Ford wasn't quite as 'must destroy portal' after he got back, after the changes Mabel made to the timeline [in Five Years Older]. So the portal still exists (was rebuilt after Weirdmageddon?), and Dipper had been spending a decent chunk of time helping Ford make it safe to operate, and now... yeah. Dipper's traveling the multiverse a bit, on his own for the n'th time at this point. … [Because] 27-ish(-plus?) is totally "older" than 17 ;) Yes.”
> 
> I stole practically every piece of dialogue in here [straight from her fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16891200/), make no bones about it. The rest of this mess is just my own stupid brain sprawling crazy-ass junk out all over the page, _just because_. (...Yay, plot, yay? *coughs*)
> 
> EDIT: Please note that while the events that happen in this fic correspond almost exactly to what happens in Nicnac's fic up through her Chapter 2, the Dipper in this fic is NOT the same as the Dipper in Nicnac's fic. This is an AU of her AU. (Sorry for any prior confusion on this front!)

\---

This wasn’t exactly Dipper’s first rodeo.

...Not that he was actually _in a rodeo_ at the moment, per se. In actuality, he was currently sitting at a perfectly innocent-looking table in the middle of a perfectly normal open-air shopping mall just outside a perfectly normal restaurant, reading a book as he waited for his waitress to come back with his perfectly normal drink order and meal.

And if Dipper had been in his own home dimension, dealing with business as usual, the only banality he’d be worried about at the moment would be whether or not the waitress might accidentally spill his water, in a fit of spontaneous and otherwise completely-avoidable carelessness.

...Not that that wasn’t a very legitimate worry. This sort of thing was, in fact, one of the reasons why he _wasn’t_ back in his home dimension again, just yet. Dipper’s luck had been fluctuating in some rather unexpected directions, the last thirteen dimensions he’d jumped through -- and he _was_ working on that, while hoping in the meantime that it would settle down soon on it’s own, without need for further measures to be taken. (Not that that was very likely, at this point.)

Dipper had noticed the initial problem almost immediately, of course, and he’d narrowed down his little luck problem to the correct source all on his own -- a bracelet he’d “won” (read: ‘had freely accepted like some dupe’) off of a seemingly poor denisen of Dimension 32.47 in a game of chance, in lieu of the money that had been owed. (And Dipper had ended up in ‘a poor and sorry state’ himself shortly thereafter -- also as his Grunkle Stan had put it, in fact upon first sight of him over the interdimensional communicator, well after the fact.)

It was completely and utterly Dipper’s own fault. Dipper knew this. He never should have accepted a strange item from an unknown individual in any dimension in which magic was as advanced as science -- especially not when he was still a complete novice in the driving magical and scientific forces in said dimension. But Dipper had done so, thinking of nothing more than gifting such a strange and interesting-looking bracelet to Mabel, and…

Great-Uncle Ford had been _very_ sympathetic when he’d found out, of course. So had Jheselbraum the Unswerving, who Great-Uncle Ford had eventually had to enlist in his efforts, to help him help Dipper, in properly quarantining and disposing of said luck-altering bracelet.

Though when Dipper had first noticed his error -- all but tripping over his own feet when he’d crossed the threshold of his own room at the ‘interdimensional hotel’ they were staying at for the duration of the local alien festival -- he hadn’t said anything to his great-uncle, not at first. He was 27 years old, after all; he had been sure that he could take care of himself on a trip that had really been just a simple interdimensional pleasure jaunt!

So Dipper had tried to resolve it on his own. He’d noted that he was exhibiting a level of discoordination he hadn’t experienced since he’d been eighteen and had his final growth spurt, and figured that it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary that he hadn’t dealt with before, that he could deal with it just fine. He’d started out by spending a good part of the night checking his own biology for unexpected toxins, poisons, and drugs that he might have somehow been exposed to accidentally ingested -- which had nearly become reflex for him at that point. (Though these days he generally did that _before_ he'd been exposed to something questionable and caught it then, rather than after.)

Then, eventually, after taking scans of himself in more and more detail -- and triple-checking all of those results time and time again, more and more carefully -- he’d moved on to the next possibility, and started scanning every item he had on his person, in addition to that. He’d cursed under his breath when he’d finally located the problematic item…

...and then he’d gotten on with things.

Because Dipper had thought he could handle it. He’d told himself that he hadn’t wanted to spoil the festival for his great-uncle, but, really, in retrospect, he really just had felt embarrassed by the whole situation. He hadn’t wanted his great-uncle getting involved in something he’d brought upon himself, in part because he just didn’t want to bother or worry his great-uncle with it.

But if he was being completely honest with himself, it was also because he’d felt that it would mean that he couldn’t handle it himself. That he couldn’t handle these sorts of things himself, and that he couldn’t be trusted to go out and about on his own without screwing something up and getting himself into trouble.

Great-Uncle Ford had called the very thought ‘nonsense, my boy!’ after the truth had come out -- three dimensions later -- and given Dipper a scarily-enlightening and very down-to-earth retelling of more than a few times when Great-Uncle Ford had dealt with things on his own, but had truly _wished_ he’d had someone at his back... and how much better things _would_ have gone if he _had_ had someone he could depend on during those times.

Dipper had basically been chided by his Great-Uncle for not depending on the people who cared about him when he could, and outright told that it was _not_ weak to do so. (That it was, in fact, quite possibly the _opposite_ to not ask for help when it was sorely needed.) It had been the sort of lecture that he would have expected out of Mabel… and _had_ gotten when they’d both finally broken down and called them on the communicator.

Dipper (and Great-Uncle Ford) had hoped to completely resolve the situation before they both were to return home again for the next weekly family dinner over at the Shack. ...Really, Dipper had hoped that it would be completely handled before any of his other family members found out about what had happened and teased him mercilessly for his mistake.

Instead, upon their mid-week check-in, they’d found said family dinners being moved up to once per _day_ by Mabel -- with breakfasts and lunches added in, no less -- due to it being summertime in their dimension again. This had led to Dipper having to explain the situation with no small embarrassment to his twin sibling and his grunkle, when asked why missing the next few weeks of meals together was on the menu instead, ‘really Dip-dop, just come home already! what’s so great about all those other dimensions, anyway? you’re missing out on time with your _family!!_ ’

...Well, at least they’d _both_ run into trouble with Mabel for that one. Technically, Dipper had still gotten that dreaded lecture from Mabel, but at least the chiding had been spread around a bit to the both of them for ‘being so stubborn!’ On the positive side, though, the lecture had resulted in an equally-embarrassed-as-him Ford finally calling on one of _his_ old friends for help for the _both_ of them -- Jheselbraum the Unswerving.

Because at that point, they’d been bouncing through dimensions four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine, moving from good-to-bad-to-middling-to-fine-to-worse-to- _terrible_ -to-better situations like a pogo stick sky-high on Smile Dip. If if had just been a simple run-of-the-mill “bad luck” charm, Great-Uncle Ford could’ve handled it, covering Dipper’s back while they found a final solution to separate Dipper from the bracelet, and the bracelet from Dipper. But that hadn’t been what it had been. The bracelet had been a _karma_ charm, and Dipper had _taken_ it from its previous owner while trying to do them a good turn.

 _That_ had led to such insanity as Dipper being incredibly clumsy for the next three dimensions… while the bounty hunter that had been chasing Great-Uncle Ford (and had planned on abducting Dipper as leverage) had kept on following them, only getting more and more frustrated all the while as the deadshot had kept missing Dipper with his dart gun!

...because Dipper kept stumbling all over the place haphazardly at _just_ the _right_ wrong moments, due to the karma bracelet looking out for him.

Which would have turned out just fine on its own…

...except that the karma Dipper had gotten for lying to his Great-Uncle about his little luck problem had sent things swinging even more wildly, because at least part of the reason why he hadn’t told his great-uncle about it _had_ been with good intentions also, even if the lying itself had been bad, and...

...let’s just say that it had gotten a _little_ intense there towards the end there, with the bounty hunter that had been after the bounty hunter that was chasing the bounty hunter that was chasing after _them_ , the three B’rnith’ian orphans that he and Great-Uncle Ford had found themselves unceremoniously thrust into shepherding around the rural outskirts of that jungle planet in Dimension 764 -- who were apparently the lost rulers of _another_ planet three solar systems away, that they’d only learned through the least-probable string of circumstances _imaginable_ had needed to be presented at a coronation ceremony in less than three days time (yes, _all three of them_ ), because their absence would _very_ likely have otherwise led to a civil war between twelve other neighboring solar systems due to there being no other acceptable claimants to the multi-system oligarchy’s throne -- and the authorities that had tossed Great-Uncle Ford into prison in that dimension having recognized Great-Uncle Ford on that space station only two stops away from said coronation ceremony for those three orphans...

(Dipper still didn’t know whether that stroke of luck, in finding out about those orphans true identities, had been good or bad, because -- as Mabel probably would have put it -- on the plus side: no war! On the minus side: those three orphans hadn’t exactly looked _happy_ having been handed that much responsibility on a platter…)

Dimension number ten since Dipper’s predicament had first begun had been the home dimension of Jheselbraum the Unswerving herself, and it hadn’t been an understatement to say that they’d both been more than a little relieved to be there. And, with Jheselbraum being an Oracle of some renown and no small capability, she had navigated Dipper’s little karma problem without any issues (or “karma splashback”) whatsoever to herself.

Great-Uncle Ford’s karma, by proximity to the bracelet and in trying to help Dipper, had been in a bit of flux due to the circumstances, but it had largely settled out within hours of the bracelet’s destruction. He’d spent a day or two with Jheselbraum, then been sent home to Mabel and Grunkle Stan.

Not so for Dipper, the latest and last recipient of the bracelet. _His_ luck was _still_ in flux, ten days and another three dimensions later.

Because at that point, Dipper was quite literally a trouble _magnet_. ...Yes, literally. He’d managed to store up a _lot_ of good karma and positive energy in that bracelet when it went, and when it did it hit him all-at-once. And that had been a bit dangerous, so Jheselbraum had explained to them. And the only way to ‘ground him out’ _safely_ was for Dipper to go out _finding_ a few deserving individuals who were ‘down on their luck’ and in trouble, and letting _his_ good luck ‘rub off on them’, as it were.

So Dipper had gotten his original wish. ...Sort of. He was traveling alone, on his own, and showing he could go it on his own, handling the rest of the problem of his fluctuating luck himself.

...and he was doing it all without Great-Uncle Ford. Jheselbraum was the one setting up and taking down the interdimensional portals for him to travel through, from her end for him, instead of him calling back and using the portal machine from back home in Dimension 46’\ for his jumps. (Apparently, with everything that had happened with Bill, going back _there_ while Dipper was like this was downright _dangerous_... for reasons Jheselbraum had not wanted to get into. And, with the look that he and Great-Uncle Ford had exchanged while both thinking of the _worst_ possible recipient of said luck -- who neither of them would _want_ to have some ‘good luck’ potentially coming their way -- one who was not exactly, shall we say, _living_ in their dimension anymore? She hadn’t had to.) Even opening up a portal from that dimension for him to use, however briefly, had seemed enough of a risk that they’d all agreed on this option instead.

His trips to dimensions number eleven and twelve since this whole fiasco had begun had grounded him out, with Jheselbraum’s guidance in who he should ‘target’ as a recipient of some startlingly good luck.

...Dimension number thirteen, however, was different.

Upon his return from the previous dimension to Jheselbraum’s own, the Oracle had told him that he was ‘grounded out’ but still ‘in flux’. His luck needed some time to settle.

And she’d offered him a choice.

Dipper could stay with her for as long as was needed, for that to happen naturally on its own… which she’d thought would take anywhere from three months to a _year_...

… _or_ he could search for something that would help even his own luck out completely, to what it _should_ be instead.

There was a book, the Oracle had told him, that existed in a particular dimension. And if Dipper went to that dimension, and found and read that book, he would have the chance to fix his luck within _weeks_. -- _Days_ , even!

And when Jheselbraum had told him the title of the book, Dipper had gotten downright excited. (...He’d also felt a little dread, because he _really_ hadn’t been brushing up on his spellwork and practical mysticism like he should have, and with a title like _An Abridged Handbook on Luck, Karma, and the Inner Workings of the Universe, a diary, by a not-too-influential traveler of Dimensions and Smaller Folded-Space Oddities, how did you even find this book, do you even know the sixteen-thousand substrands of Cthulu’s Mark and how it impacts ethereal soundwaves to begin with, I’m pretty sure you don’t or you wouldn’t be reading this book, well, it’s fine, I added it into the appendix for you just in case, so you’d better read that first; maybe you’ll find this useful but probably not, on account of this being the very last place you’d look for it, now you’ve found it, congratulations, by Yuang-Xing Chu; No Money-Back Guarantee, Quantities Are Limited, All Rights Reserved"_? Dipper had a feeling that knew _exactly_ why the Oracle had only said that he had a _chance_ to fix his luck that quickly.)

As things stood, Dipper was desperately holding out hope that _this_ book -- that he’d actually managed to find here, in the deep shadows of the library she’d directly portaled him into the far corners of -- really _did_ hold the answer to all of his problems!

...Of course, if it did, then it would be far more likely that that upcoming glass of water was _not_ going to dowse the small notebook he was currently jotting down several new spellcasting techniques into, but rather end up being spilled all over _the book_ he was reading, instead. His still-fluctuating luck wasn’t exactly impacting his _own_ body anymore when it came to clumsiness, but it sure had seemed to be affecting _other_ people that way, all along the walk to the open-air mall, where he’d finally sat down to get himself some real human food and peruse his prize.

So to say that Dipper had been a tad bit _distracted_ when someone had walked up to his table, sat down, and tried to start a conversation with him, when he’d been nose-down in this book and taking studious notes? Well, that had really been understating his level of focus.

He’d _noticed_ , of course -- he’d become well-used to keeping at least some general level of awareness of his surroundings at all times, almost unconsciously, over the years that he’d been traveling and training with Great-Uncle Ford. He hadn’t needed to be told that it was a good idea to keep track of such things in other dimensions at all times. But he’d almost subconsciously labeled his table’s visitor ‘not a threat’ almost immediately from his almost-nervous body posture, younger age, energetic nature, and smaller build -- not to mention the complete and total lack of that air of ‘deadly casual killer’ that Dipper had come to recognize in unsafe individuals rather quickly. (Some things were just universal in dangerous beings of all shapes, stripes, and colors, as Great-Uncle Ford had related to him, and Dipper had found out through personal experience of his own. Dipper himself called it the ‘Gideon vibe’.)

But Dipper was a bit busy at the moment, and so he did not overtly acknowledge the new and completely unthreatening presence at his table. (For all he knew, in this dimension, and on this Earth populated with humans, random strangers did just this sometimes. ...Though he hadn’t seen anyone do that when he’d first seen and chosen this particular establishment for his source of lunchtime sustenance. Maybe this person had seen him alone and thought he could use the company? Dipper was getting oddly Mabel-ish vibes from them...)

The young interloper said something-or-another, and Dipper did the usual polite thing that one did with humans (and most other species) when they talked to you because they thought you were lonely and wanted a friend, and you weren’t particularly inclined to start up a conversation with them: Dipper moved his eyes upward to the young man’s face (the polite bit, acknowledging their existence was something worthy of being acknowledged by taking the time to actually glance at them briefly), and then Dipper looked back down to his book (moving visual focus away from them to physically indicate casual disinterest, while maintaining a relaxed and neutral posture that broadcasted neither aggression nor fear) and said, “I don’t need anything, thanks.”

The young man had kept on chattering at him though, as Dipper tried to read, and Dipper became peripherally aware that the young man wasn’t trying to keep him company; he was trying to sell him something. ...Which was a tad annoying, since he was sitting where he was waiting for his lunch to arrive, but it wasn’t as though Dipper didn’t know how to handle this sort of situation. So when Dipper was offered the young man’s business card, he took it almost reflexively, fully intending to glance at it, say something neutral like ‘thanks, I’ll think about it,’ and then his unexpected ‘guest’ would go away.

And for what it was worth, Dipper _had_ glanced at it.

It was the double-take that hadn’t been planned. His focus had clarified abruptly and with no small shock when he looked back at the far too familiar-looking business card he’d just taken and realized that he _recognized it_.

He recognized it from a box that had been in his Grunkle’s office, that he’d gone through looking for clues and answers, on one very fateful summer afternoon more than a decade ago.

‘Couldn’t be,’ Dipper thought, as he turned his face upward to look -- really _look_ \-- up at the young man very closely.

Dipper managed to contain the rest of his reaction, smoothing out his expression, but admittedly it still wasn’t easy, finding himself peering up at this far, _far_ younger version of his Grunkle Stan.

‘Oh, man,’ Dipper thought with no small dismay, that he kept well off of his face. Because, if he knew his family history -- and after that one fateful summer, he _did_...

“Aren’t you a little young to be doing this?” Dipper tried carefully. “Shouldn’t you be in school right now?” Because maybe, just maybe, in this dimension...

Dipper’s hopes were dashed to pieces right at his feet, when this young Stan laughed, loud and grating in the worry and stress this Stan was trying (unsuccessfully) to suppress. “School? Buddy, I’m twenty-five.” Dipper tried to keep the pure disbelief at the terrible lie off of his face, but he knew he hadn’t succeeded when he saw this Stan’s grin widen, and the poor kid started to literally sweat.

‘Dear god,’ Dipper thought, as the reality of the situation truly hit him. This Stan was a kid. _A kid._ Looking at him, he _couldn’t_ be much more than seventeen years old, and Dipper remembered what it was like to be that young ...a full _decade_ ago. ‘Dear god.’

Dipper stared at this young and quite possibly homeless version of his Grunkle, and this young Stanley Pines stared right back.

It took Dipper several long moments to realize that _he_ was going to have to be the one to say something first, and… he had no idea what to say. He was not built for this. He wished Mabel was here, because she would…

What _would_ Mabel do?

Dipper didn’t really even have to ask; he knew. Mabel had risked her own existence to help their own Grunkle Stan, back in their own dimension, when she’d gotten her hands on a timetape and the idea for it. And if she’d been able to ask Dipper at the time if he’d be okay with maybe-sacrificing his own existence for their great uncles, too, he wouldn’t have hesitated in his response any more than she had.

He was going to help him.

(...Well, okay, maybe he would have hesitated a little bit at the situation as it had occurred back home, but only because he would have needed a minute to try and figure out how to stop Time Baby from undoing everything that he and his sister would have been doing to fix things. But this was a completely different dimension, so screwing up his and his sister’s own timeline wasn’t even an issue here!)

“What is it you’re selling?” Dipper asked him, because the easiest way he could help this Stan _right now_ was really also the most obvious one.

“The Sham Total,” Stan said without missing a beat, whipping one of those horrible blue shammies out of a bag at his side. “It’s made from--”

“How much are they?” Dipper asked, cutting to the chase.

“One for a dollar or three for five dollars.”

Dipper blinked at him, temporarily thrown. He’d been planning on trying to figure out the pros and cons of taking a smaller number of shammies versus a larger number, estimating what quantity would be the best choice that he could get away with buying to give Stan the most profit, but... “That math doesn’t…”

Then Dipper realized: two dollars extra for two more? This _really was_ his grunkle Stan. He was only younger. ...Startlingly, achingly younger.

“Okay, I’ll take three,” he told the teenager, pulling out his wallet. He was pretty sure he had a five dollar bill in there still, along with at least one twenty, and he didn’t want to scare him off with a large purchase -- or worse, get thought of as a sucker. Three shammies would be more than enough for anyone, as a normal starting purchase. ‘Start small, then reel ‘em in,’ he heard his Grunkle Stan’s voice ring out in his head.

Dipper also doubted that this Stan would take anything that looked too much like charity, so he’d have to be careful here, he knew. ‘Too good to be true’ was _dangerous_ , more often than not, and while Dipper had learned that one the hard way from dealing with a certain demonic dorito, he doubted that _any_ version of his grunkle would have ever been quite _that_ stupid at _any_ age.

Dipper also, sadly, wasn’t entirely sure that he had _that_ much human-US-currency in cash form on him currently to spend. Mabel had insisted that he always keep some on him, after _last_ time when he’d been late meeting her for dinner at a local diner due to portal travels, and forgotten to grab his normal wallet, but… he needed to pay for his meal here, too, and… he didn’t want to risk coming up short for either transaction. He couldn’t exactly get away with slinging _gold_ around here _in public._ Certainly not in front of this Stan.

(Gold was a universal currency across dimensions for a reason -- it was pleasingly shiny to look at for most beings with visual senses, and pleasingly mutable and warm to deform at a touch for more tactile species in pure form, to say nothing of its conductive qualities. He’d planned on visiting a jeweler later, but as for right now...?)

“Sold!” Stan told him, with a shine of dizzy relief in his eyes so strong that it made Dipper want to wince. Instead, he held out his five dollar bill, took the three shammies he was offered in return, and watched as the teenager shoved the dollar bill in a pocket and booked it out of there so fast, it nearly had Dipper craning his head around, on the lookout for the cops that must be on his tail for stealing.

...except Stan had been conducting a perfectly normal and legal business transaction, out in broad daylight, in the middle of the day. There was no need to walk away like that, at a speed barely short of a run.

Dipper stared off in the direction that Stan had vanished for a long time, then let out a long breath as he put his wallet away.

As the waitress came out with his food, and he stared down at his book sightlessly, his mind was already a million light-years away, already making plans to look up the current exchange rate for gold on this planet in this dimension, get his gold exchanged for proper US currency, schedule his day around being here in the afternoon to see Stan as he made his ‘selling rounds’ again...

‘I can probably spend the morning on research, then head here again for lunch...’ Dipper thought, as he absently moved his notepad on top of his book, and lifted both out of the way, just before the waitress spilled his water glass all over the table.

He smiled up at her as, flustered, she cleaned up the spill quickly with napkins.

“Don’t worry about it,” Dipper told her, stowing both paper items and his pen away inside his traveling coat, before reaching out to help her sop up the mess with the nearest available cleaning object.

“...Ah,” Dipper said, as the shammie he used bled blue dye out all over his hands and the tabletop surface, much to his waitress’ horror and dismay. “Hm.”

Discretion being the better part of valor, Dipper managed to get away _mostly_ ‘clean’ with the food (packaged up), the bill (paid), and a promise to come by tomorrow and get the stain out of the tabletop surface (because none of the cleaning solutions they’d had on hand had quite managed to be up to the feat). Luckily(?!), he seemed to come off enough as a ‘geeky scientist type’ to these people that they believed him when he said that he was an inventor, and that he had had the ‘shammies’ on him because he’d been planning on using them to invent a cleaning solution that would work against even the toughest and worst stains imaginable -- bought them for that very purpose, in fact.

He almost couldn't believe that they'd believed _him_ , as he crammed the shammies (wet and dry) into separate bags from his backpack and stowed them away, along with the meal from the restaurant. He shouldered his pack, then headed off. Once he’d gotten his gold exchanged into the proper local currency and denominations he needed, he asked for directions from a passerby and got himself to the proper local store for supplies. Once better outfitted, Dipper then found himself a hotel in the area that didn’t look too outright sketchy or bug-ridden, bought himself a room…

...and then spent the rest of the night trying to come up with a cleaning solution that would work on the sort of stain that those shammies left behind on absolutely _everything_ that they touched when they were wet.

Given that the tables at that restaurant were stainless steel, and the dye being what it was, the only solution Dipper was able to come up with that worked out for any surface at all was an acid so strong that it literally scoured the top surface away past the depth that the stain had set in.

Dipper set that two-part solution (and third part basic solution for neutralizing the acid) aside on the bathroom counter in a pair of glass containers, cleaned up as best as he could (he was _not_ getting this dye out of his hands anytime soon, _what_ in the _world_ was its full chemical makeup?), and then walked back out into the bedroom area and glanced over at the clock -- 11:30pm.

Dipper sighed a sigh full of deep regret at his earlier mistake of trying to use said shammy. It was far too late to go out looking for more food; Dipper knew full well how unlikely it was that he could find anyplace with food he was liable to find edible open at this hour. He settled for pulling out some travel-jerky from a pocket, and made a light meal of it for his dinner, along with some tap water. (It was fine; he could replace the jerky tomorrow with a similar foodstuff from one of the grocery stores in the area, he was certain.) Once he was done, he washed up, then collapsed on his hotel room bed.

He’d left most of his normal dimension-jumping tools and supplies behind when he’d traveled to this dimension. He hadn’t wanted to risk losing any of them here, or having them stolen, because who-knew-what effect alien technology might have on the trajectory of these people’s local technological developments. (He wasn’t there to change the world, he was just visiting there for a short time to try and solve his own problems.) That meant that he’d left his molecular scanner behind, among other things.

Dipper couldn’t believe how dependent he’d gotten on some of his tools, honestly. The number of times he’d made a grab for a scanner or sampler or device readout or organizer -- looking for a quick answer to a simple question that he could have just as easily logicked out from basic observation -- had just been downright embarrassing. He hadn’t really _needed_ those tools to figure out anything for him, for the most part -- and once he’d had a chance in the morning to go and get some real chemistry supplies, he’d be able to determine the _exact_ composition of the dye on his own. He’d been letting his technology do his thinking for him.

“With pen and paper, pipet in hand…” Dipper murmured to himself, amused. He tossed an arm over his face and smiled up at the ceiling. If Great-Uncle Ford could see him now...

And at that thought, Dipper’s smiled turned into a slight frown. Because… what _would_ Great-Uncle Ford think of what he was doing? Should he have really let Stan go? Was he okay for the night someplace, or was he sleeping in his car?

Where _was_ that Stanley right now?

Dipper let out a breath.

‘Stay cool; go slow,’ he told himself. He couldn’t risk scaring this Stanley off. Because if he did...

Dipper didn’t have his DNA tracker on him. He might not find him again. Not before it was too late. And if Stan didn’t want to be found...

\---

When Dipper woke up the next morning, he went out and handled the stained table at the restaurant first-thing. He was surprised by how surprised the management had been to see him back. Not that they’d been incredibly happy to be confronted with the reality that the only way to ‘clean’ the table back to a pristine state was to effectively scour off the top millimeter of surfacetop, but by the time Dipper was done, the table _wasn’t_ blue anymore.

He ordered breakfast from there, and took it with him back to his hotel room.

He spent the rest of the morning eating breakfast while reading through the book he’d been directed to and trying to take notes, but he found himself distracted. That stupid dye… it itched at him.

\--Not literally, mind you. His hands were fine. It was just… what _was_ the full chemical composition of the stuff, and _why_ did it stain everything so badly? (Did the chemical makeup of the cloth material have something to do with it?)

He finally gave up around 10am and rose from the bed to slam his way out of the hotel room.

He did his shopping, and got the necessary supplies he needed. (He was going to end up with a full chemistry setup in his hotel room at this rate, yet he somehow couldn’t bring himself to care; it had been a long time since he’d indulged in anything quite so hands-on that required so much sedentary _work_.) He checked his watch, realized it was getting close to noon, and made a detour back for the shopping mall again.

He picked a different restaurant this time, nearby the previous day’s restaurant and with a view of the entire plaza. He set his bags and his backpack down at his feet, and he pulled out his book again, but he kept a much better eye out. He wanted to spot Stan before this Stan spotted him.

And Dipper likely would have, he was certain… if that Stan had came.

But Stan didn’t show.

\---

Dipper paced the hotel room. He’d stayed at the shopping mall all afternoon, and Stan hadn’t showed. It was well into the evening now, and Dipper didn’t really know what to do.

He’d had a plan -- a good one, he’d thought -- but it had revolved around ‘accidentally’ running into Stan as he made his rounds looking for customers. If Dipper didn’t know where Stan was making his rounds -- and apparently he _didn’t_ , because Stan wasn’t being consistent with where he was looking for customers (or marks?) in the area -- then...

Dipper sat down on the bed with a tired sigh, and pinched the bridge of his nose. He wasn’t getting anywhere by panicking.

“All right,” Dipper said to himself. “Start with what you know. What do I know about this Stan?”

...Almost nothing. He’d been wrong about him showing up again. And really, what _did_ he know about him and his situation? Because, when it really came down to it, the only other things Dipper had on him were those shammies, and that business card that he almost seemed like he hadn’t wanted to let go of.

Oh. The business card. Maybe he could contact him using that!

Dipper reached for his pocket and pulled out the business card he’d been given, hoping to find a phone number on it that he could call, and then he stopped and stared.

And then he really didn’t know what to feel, caught between a sensation that was a little like both smiling and crying.

Because it was a motel room. The address on Stan’s business cards was _a motel room_.

“Oh, _Stan_ ,” Dipper breathed out, not quite a laugh.

\---

It took Dipper another hour to figure something out as an excuse to go see him, but he did figure something out. It was a bit haphazard and rushed, but it’d work. It’d have to.

It took him another thirty minutes of prep after that, but once he was done--

\---

Dipper tracked down the motel and found the room with the number from the card. He scoped the place out first, then he made his way up to it from the front. And as he walked up to it -- first floor, easy egress -- he heard movement inside. He knocked on the door, and the noise inside immediately ceased.

‘Uh huh, nice try,’ Dipper thought with a mental smirk. He knocked again. He heard faint brushes of movement across the floor towards the door.

“I know you’re in there; I can hear you,” Dipper called out. He could ‘see’ him, too; or, at least, he had seen the light at the peephole change in intensity slightly, going into shadow as the light from inside was blocked by the head of the person inside, as they peered out at him through it.

He practically heard the person on the other side of the door startle in place; the floorboards in this place must be pretty awful.

He waited.

“No refunds!” he heard Stan yell through the door, and Dipper barely stifled a smile. ‘Hello, young Grunkle Stan.’ And here he’d been worried that it might not be him, that he might have moved already. But then again, even the Grunkle Stan that he’d known growing up had always been weirdly honest in certain ways.

“I’m not here for a refund,” Dipper told him, hoping that starting out with that first-thing would be enough to not immediately be having his ‘quarry’ rushing for the bathroom window in the back. _That_ would not be a fun chase. At the lack of a response, Dipper sighed internally. “I was wondering if you dyed the shammies yourself?” he tried next. He was pretty sure that Stan _had_ ; if he hadn’t, he could have gone after his supplier for dyeing it wrong, to get his money back. Instead, he’d seemed stuck selling what he’d had.

It wouldn’t be too good if he knew too much, though, so playing it at least a little dumb on certain things was the watchword of the day.

At the continued lack of response, Dipper tried again to peak Stan’s interest. “The chemical additive I created to help the dye adhere to the cloth better isn’t working as well as I hoped, but I thought maybe if you added it into the dye directly it could work.” He hoped this worked; he’d been trying to hit the right balance of knowledgeable, but not _too_ able. ‘I’ve got something you might want, but you’ll have to talk to me to get it, and you have something I might want in return.’

He hoped to hell he wasn’t being too blatant about it. That would just make Stan more suspicious, if he was anything like his grunkle.

Dipper heard the door go, and saw it open by a small crack, the chain lock holding it in place. That was a good sign, right? He wasn’t quite staring him right in the face, but he could see at least one eye.

“Why did you make a chemical to fix the dye on my shammies?” Stan asked him, with a very suspicious look on the half of his face that Dipper could see.

“Because they stained my hands and bathroom counters blue,” Dipper told him, holding up his hands so Stan could see them. It was only about half a lie; he’d made the mistake of staining the restaurant table, but had made efforts not to stain anything else in the hotel room where he’d been staying.

“Yeah I got that, but why are you coming to me with this stuff?” Stan just sounded outright confused at first, and then Dipper heard a change in his tone that Dipper took for the warning sign that it was. “Did you want to buy a new set made with the new dye?”

It was that ‘was this sucker born a minute ago?’ tone that he’d heard Grunkle Stan use sometimes, when he stopped seeing people as people and started seeing them as walking wallets that he could pickpocket.

‘I don’t think so,’ Dipper thought. He wanted to help this Stan, sure, but getting taken advantage of by him? That wouldn’t help anyone.

“No, I’m good for shammies,” Dipper told him, backing away from the edge as casually as he could. “I just thought you would want it, assuming I can make it work.”

“I bought cheap dye for a reason,” was the next response he got out of him, and that just left Dipper outright confused.

“Why?” Dipper asked him. Because why would Stan sell an inferior product when he could have a better one for no extra cost? “I can’t possibly be the first one to have complained about this; you automatically assumed I was here for a refund.” He couldn’t possibly like the idea of angry customers storming his motel room, or he wouldn’t have been so wary of Dipper having shown up at his door like he had. “Wouldn’t it be better if people were coming to see you because they liked the product so much they wanted to buy more?”

He saw the moment he lost him, when the look on his face shifted to something more closed off. “Look buddy, I ain’t buying your chemical whatever,” Stan told him gruffly, in tones that were only different from his own Grunkle Stan’s in pitch and age.

Dipper forced himself to remain outwardly calm. “I wasn’t trying to sell it; I was just going to give it to you,” he tried, going for complete honesty. Grunkle Stan had always been good at telling that, right?

“Sure you were,” Stan said flatly. “Pull the other one, it’s got bells on.”

Okay, apparently this younger Stan wasn’t so good at that yet. “I was,” Dipper insisted, then went for broke. “I just want to help.”

“I ain’t stupid,” Stan told him, and internally Dipper was two seconds away from kicking down the door and forcing his way in, so he could shake him until he saw sense. Because what seventeen-year-old turned down help when it was openly offered, no strings attached? “Nobody does something for nothing,” Stan told him adamantly, “So what are you getting out of helping me?”

“Nothing,” Dipper tried to make clear. “I…”

And then Dipper went almost rigid in horror at himself. His expression froze as his mind raced.

 _Charity._ Stan would _not_ accept charity. Charity was being given things for free. --Dipper had just screwed up _royally_ by insisting that he wanted to _help_ Stan _for free_.

Dipper pulled in a slow breath and forced himself to relax. “--Ten percent of the gross profit on the sales of the shammies,” he told Stan, channeling as much of his sister as he possibly could in that moment.

That got him a confused look. “Gross profits? Is that some kind of crack?”

Dipper opened his mouth for a moment, then closed it. “No. The gross profit, as opposed to the net profit.” He and Mabel had learned this _from Stan_.

“I don’t sell nets,” he was told, and was this a joke?

From the look on Stan’s face, Dipper got a sinking feeling that it wasn’t.

“No, not nets. I’m talking about gross profits and net profits,” he told Stan, and he felt almost sick as the blank look on Stan’s face didn’t ease up in the slightest. ‘Dear lord, am I really going to have to do this?’ Dipper wondered. This felt so _wrong_.

...Apparently, he _was_. Dipper sighed, then launched into an explanation.

Stan got a thinking look as he explained, and it took him awhile, but his face cleared up slightly after awhile. And when he nodded at the end of it and said, “So what you’re saying is you’ll give me this chemical to make the shammies better for free up front, and in return I give you ten percent of the gross profits for selling them?” Dipper let out an internal sigh of relief.

“Exactly,” Dipper told him.

“I’ll give you five percent of the net,” was the next thing Stan said, and Dipper almost smirked, because this younger Stan had lost track of the earlier thread -- Dipper had effectively just talked him up from zero to something, when Dipper would’ve taken _anything_. Stan _could_ have gone a lot lower, but he hadn’t; clearly, he was new at this.

\--The poor sucker! Fiver percent net had been what he’d _expected_ Stan to say, after he’d said ten percent of the gross, which is why he’d said ten percent of the gross. He’d really wanted five percent net, and--

...Okay, wow, maybe he should dial back his ‘inner Mabel’ a bit. He wasn’t actually _trying_ to make a fair amount of money off of Stan here. He had plenty enough to live off of on his person already as it was.

“--Deal,” Dipper said before Stan could change his mind, and Stan gave him a look almost as suspicious as the first one, but in a different way.

“Why exactly do you want to make a deal with me anyway?” Dipper was asked.

And _that_... actually caught him completely off-guard.

He couldn’t say that Stan was kind-of-sort-of-family. That would require an explanation of dimensional travel, and _that_ would _definitely_ scare Stan off (or have him thinking he was some kind of a lunatic madman). He couldn’t say he wanted to help Stan out just because he wanted to help him out, because of the charity thing. He couldn’t come up with a completely off-the-wall lie, because Stan would just write him off as a liar, and Dipper got the feeling that that would come back to bite him in the ass later.

...Okay, hm. Maybe he should try to be as honest as possible without completely telling the truth for these particular circumstances, then? What could he say, that would be true but also not give anything away? And it probably shouldn’t focus on Stan personally, either, or Stan would wonder _why him_.

Maybe if it was more of an opportunity thing? That he was looking for someone _like_ Stan, and Stan just so happened to fit the bill?

It took Dipper a bit to think of something, a way to put it all, but when he looked up again, Stan was just standing there, waiting for him patiently to respond.

And that helped calm him down a bit. Stan being patient with him wasn’t exactly… _new_ , but…

Stan waiting for him patiently to get his thoughts in order without making fun of him… _was?_

Oh. That’s right. Stan was seventeen; he’d probably only just left home. He was probably still used to Ford being…

Dipper pulled in a deep breath. He knew how he wanted to proceed now.

“Well, I’m a scientist,” Dipper began, which was true. “Presently I’m working on a project of utmost importance,” Dipper told him -- and it was, figuring out that book and fixing his luck so he could get back home to his family was _absolutely_ of the utmost importance to him -- “But one that’s not exactly lucrative.” Oh boy, was it not. No-one was going to pay him for this, and he’d been spending money like a sieve since this whole thing had begun. He had a lifeline in his interdimensional communicator if he needed more help or supplies, but... “If I could get a passive source of income, then I could spend less time worrying about money, and more time working on completing my project.”

Because Dipper wasn’t too worried about it now, but… how long might he need to stay here?

“So you want to be the nerdy scientist who makes discoveries and invents stuff and for me to be the salesman with lots of personality that makes the money to support us?” he was asked.

“More or less,” Dipper agreed. That was certainly one way to put it, and it certainly worked for him. If that was what Stan wanted, Dipper was pretty sure he could manage that. He’d just have to not ‘invent’ something too out there and ahead-of-its-time technology-wise.

Dipper watched Stan as he chewed his lip and slowly mentally talked himself into it.

It was still nerve-wracking to see the door close, and a relief to hear the chain unlatch and to see the door open again -- all the way open this time.

Hearing the “You got a deal,” from Stan was really just the icing on the relief cake, as Mabel would put it, and when Stan held out his hand to him, Dipper didn’t hesitate to shake it. He didn’t hesitate to walk into the motel room when Stan waved him inside, either. “C’mon, the dye is in the bathroom.”

He did pause inside the threshold when he saw the state of the room, and all the stuff in it.

“Is this all cheaply-made junk?” Dipper asked, because it certainly looked like it to his experienced eyes. Yet another skill interdimensional travelers picked up quickly -- how to tell whether something was useful and well-made or not, by sight.

“Hey, it’s not junk,” Stan protested, as he closed the door behind him. To this, Dipper turned towards him and held up his hands again, and _this_ time, Stan sighed and admitted, “Yeah, okay, it’s a bunch of crap.”

Dipper nodded, and looked around at the ‘product’ in the room with a mental grimace. “I’ll see what I can do about the rest of this stuff too,” he promised, as he reached out and gently touched one of the pitchforks... and the head fell off. Dipper sighed. Had Grunkle Stan started out trying to sell all this cheap-as-shit junk, too? No wonder he’d had problems! How had he even sold _any_ of it to begin with?

“This might take a while,” he told Stan honestly, taking a moment to look around the room again. He didn’t see any food in here, and he hadn’t eaten dinner; somehow, he doubted that Stan had eaten much for dinner himself yet, either. ...Well, that was solved easily enough.

As Stan stood there, shifting not quite nervously from foot-to-foot, Dipper pulled out his wallet and handed over a ten dollar bill, telling him, “Here, why don’t you order us a pizza? You can get whatever you want on it; I’m not picky.”

He turned away from Stan, as he started to mentally parse the list of what all he had to work on as he walked towards the bathroom where the dye was. Best to start with that first, since he had the fixant already made up and sitting in his pocket. It would be the best way to prove to Stan that he knew what he was talking about, and could do what he said he could do.

Stan trailed him to the bathroom door. “Hey buddy, I never caught your name,” Dipper heard.

“Hmm?” he said absently, and it took a moment for him to recall and parse what Stan had just said, as he pulled out the bottle of his pocket, to set it on the countertop. “Oh, it’s Dipper.” Maybe he should run some quick basic checks on the dye first, to make sure that the chemical composition really was what he thought it was, untainted by anything that the shammies might have added into the mix?

Dipper wasn’t even thinking of holding up the ruse of not knowing Stan when he added the “Nice to meet you” to the end. It was just the reflexive politeness Great-Uncle Ford had drilled into him over the years for smalltalk with beings in dimensions not his own.

\---

Dipper got done as much as he could that first evening, but he hadn’t had all the tools or the materials he’d need to do what he needed, let alone the time. Stan really had a lot of stuff, here. He wasn’t entirely certain how or where Stan had gotten the initial funds for everything, but he was hoping it wasn’t the mob. He’d thought that Grunkle Stan had told him and his sister that he’d only gotten involved in organized crime _later_ , but… Grunkle Stan didn’t always tell the truth when he was trying to protect them, either.

It made him want to call up Grunkle Stan and just ask him, but… Dipper wasn’t too sure how Grunkle Stan would react to finding out what Dipper was doing for this other-him just then. ...Heck, some of the things Dipper was doing were things that he didn’t feel too comfortable about. Not because they were wrong or that he didn’t want to do them, just...

Actually, Dipper wasn’t entirely certain how to put it. It wasn’t as though he felt uncomfortable around Stan -- in fact, at times he felt more comfortable around Stan than he sometimes felt around Grunkle Stan, which was...

...kind of uncomfortable-feeling-inducing after the fact, sure, but during?

Not that there weren’t some uncomfortable moments ‘during’, too, but… that had more to do with the fact that Dipper was a decade older than Stan, and in seeing the way Stan reacted to certain things...

Dipper was definitely starting to get why Mabel had actually considered turning the car around on her roadtrip with their young Grunkle Stan to go back to New Jersey and punch Filbrick Pines in the face.

Dipper was pretty sure that they were in New Jersey right now, he _definitely_ wanted to punch Filbrick in the face _multiple times_ at this point, and the _only_ saving grace of the whole situation was that Dipper didn’t actually know Stan’s old address.

... _Yet_. Glass Shard Beach wasn’t that big, and Dipper bet that if he hopped on a bus and got off in the right area, and asked the right questions, he’d be able to get somebody to direct him to the Pines’ family residence without issue. Until he got there. And saw his great-grandfather.

...and then he would have to spend the rest of his time here dodging the cops for assault and battery charges, which would make helping out Stan a little more difficult than it currently was at-present.

Maybe he’d save it for the end.

Dipper decided to restrict himself to just nights, when it came to helping Stan out. Being around too much might be, well, _too much_ , and Dipper needed to split his time between helping Stan and actually being able to get himself home, anyway.

Honestly, it was for both their own good. Dipper needed and wanted to get home, and he’d told Stan that he was only helping him so that he could spend his time working on another project, to get his to agree to accepting his camouflaged help in the first place. He didn’t want Stan getting suspicious of his motives, and he _did_ need to make progress on that book so that he could fix his own fluctuating ‘in flux’ luck and go home safely, without endangering anyone he cared about (let alone the entire dimension…)

And the latter -- the problem of his luck -- was the other piece of things. Stan hadn’t shown any physical clumsiness around him as a side-effect of Dipper little luck problem, and Dipper wanted to keep it that way! Minimizing the time he physically spent around Stan to the evenings-only meant that his not-entirely-stable luckiness would be far less likely to rub off on Stan in the wrong way. Stan had it bad enough as it was, kicked out of the house at age seventeen; Dipper didn’t want to make anything _worse_ by spending too much time around him.

So Dipper went back to his hotel that night at a relatively-decent hour, so that they could both get themselves some rest -- being mindful of the fact that a seventeen-year-old Stan would need to get up in the morning the next day, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed enough to go out and sell his new product to as many people as possible.

And when Dipper woke up the next morning, after changing his clothes and getting himself some breakfast at the local diner, he made a trip to the local hardware store for supplies, tools, and other errata. He made a stop at the grocery store on the way back, as well.

He worked his way through more of the book that afternoon, with only a brief pause to wolf down a sandwich for lunch, and set his wristwatch alarm again for close to dinnertime.

When his alarm went off, he forcibly pulled himself out of his reading, did _not_ let himself fall back into the ‘just five more minutes’ trap, and made himself physically get up, grab his tools and supplies, and leave the hotel room.

Along the way, as he walked past a sub shop and his stomach growled at him, he was reminded of something that Mabel had told him about her time-trip with Grunkle Stan -- she had told him that when she asked for things, she didn’t always ask for money, because some people felt more comfortable about buying her things, instead. She usually tried to ask people for what they would feel most comfortable giving her.

It wasn’t exactly a scam thing, and she hadn’t quite learned it from Grunkle Stan. Dipper had never thought to ask her about it directly before, but it had just come out naturally when she’d been telling him things and he’d been asking questions about their younger Grunkle Stan and his reactions to some of the things she had done.

Dipper wasn’t completely oblivious; and he’d gotten a bit better about noticing some things, even when he was feeling uncomfortable, from his dimensional travels and related ‘how to stay alive’ and ‘how to interact with other alien people’ training that he’d gotten from Great-Uncle Ford. He’d noticed how Stan had gotten so quiet after he’d handed him that ten dollar bill, and how uncertain Stan had seemed about pocketing the change that had been leftover from paying for the pizza order. It had only been a few cents, and yet Stan had seemed almost guilty about it.

Stan had problems with being handed money. So Dipper would try something different.

Dipper bought two very large subs from the sub shop, and brought them with him. He didn’t make a big deal out of it, he just handed off one to Stan and carried the other one over to the corner with him, where he’d been working on the vacuum cleaner that had looked like it had had to have been a proof-of-concept, because there had only been one of them.

It made Dipper wonder if all of the products Stan had been selling had been his own inventions. Because that was just… Stan didn’t even have a _high school_ degree, and if Dipper wasn’t mistaken, this vacuum design would actually work if given a proper power source. The general design was sound; Dipper hadn’t really had to do much of anything to it all thus far, other than take it apart enough to see how it worked, and then clean it as he put it all back together. It was missing a few things right now, sure, and most of the solder connections really needed to be redone (how had Stan even managed to pull that off without a proper soldering iron?), but...

“How’s that coming?” he heard Stan ask him at one point.

“It’s coming,” Dipper told him. The electric engine actually looked efficient enough that… “I think I might be able to make it run on solar power,” which would be great, in Dipper’s opinion. He’d never liked the whole rigamarole of having to find a wall outlet to plug a vacuum into, or messing around with that pesky cord that always got in the way...

“Wouldn’t that make it hard to use in the house?” Stan asked him, and that startled Dipper out of his musings for a moment.

“Oh,” Dipper said, feeling a bit stupid for a moment. “Good point.” Dipper thought for a moment -- did that mean that solar power wasn’t feasible? ...Or did it just mean that it had to also be able to run when not being powered _directly_ by sunlight? “Maybe if I make a battery for it…”

There was a companionable silence for awhile, as Dipper tried to think of possible battery options that would work in the current form factor without being too heavy, and that would hold enough of a charge to be useful for at least... twenty minutes at a time? Thirty? ...Most people didn’t vacuum for more than an hour straight at the most, right?

“How’s your other project coming? The science-y one you said you were working on?”

Ugh. He really didn’t need the reminder at the moment. “Stone knives and bearskins, that’s how it’s coming,” Dipper told him honestly.

“I’m guessing that’s a bad thing?”

Oops. “Yeah, it is, sorry,” Dipper told him, looking back at him. “I was quoting a TV show. Wagon Train to the Stars.”

He saw Stan frown thoughtfully. “Oh yeah, I think I remember that now. That was from when they got stuck in the past and the science guy was trying to make a computer, right?”

Dipper straightened in place, in a happy sort of shock. “That’s it exactly!” Not only did they have the show here, but Stan knowing of it meant-- “You watch Wagon Train to the Stars?” Wow. Just, wow!

“I saw some episodes when Ford used to watch it,” Stan told him, and-- oh. Ah.

Time for Dipper to play dumb, again. “Who’s Ford?”

He saw Stan wince, and wished he’d been able to think of a better response than what he’d said. “My twin brother, Stanford.”

Lead with twins or names? Twins or names? “Stanford and Stanley. That’s clever,” Dipper ended up going with, and really, he was going to ask Mabel to make him his own Emmy for this when he got back, because it wasn’t like he didn’t know that if this Stan felt anything like the way his Grunkle Stan felt about it, that--

“Yeah well, clever or lazy. Take your pick,” came Stan’s annoyed drawl.

“Hmm,” Dipper said in acknowledgment, getting back to his work before he put his foot even further into it and made an even bigger mistake.

Except… was he making a mistake? He hadn’t actually known for sure that Stan had even had Ford as a brother before this, and he seemed open to talking about it. ...Maybe it would be better if he talked about it?

As he juggled a flashlight (mouth), a screwdriver (left hand), and a wrench (right hand), Dipper thought about what to say next. He settled on what he’d ask anybody he didn’t know, who had told him what Stan just had, as he set the wrench on his knee and dropped the flashlight out of his mouth to his free right hand. “So where’s your brother now?”

Dipper regretted his question shortly thereafter, because the lie was horrible and clunky and told him exactly how badly Stan did not want to talk about it. So when Stan redirected to talking about the TV show again, Dipper pounced on the out like it was a cycloptopus trying to get away from him, and he ran with it.

“What? How can you not like that episode; it’s a classic! They get stuck in the past and the captain meets his perfect woman, only to find out the only way to preserve their timeline is if he allows his new-found love to die,” Dipper said, letting himself get into it. After all, Grunkle Stan liked all those black-and-white historical dramas and stuff, didn’t he? “It’s such a tragic moral quandary.”

“No, it’s dumb,” Stan told him stubbornly. “If he really loved her he shouldn’t have let her die. Timeline, schimeline, you have to look out for the people you care about.”

“That’s exactly what Mabel always used to say,” Dipper told him, thinking of just that -- the timeline, and how she’d lived by exactly that. And how proud he was of her for it. He couldn’t remember the original timeline they’d been in, but he really hoped that the him that he’d been then would have been just as on-her-side about what she’d done as he had been, after she’d told him about it. (...Well, after his initial freak-out over everything, because apparently Time Baby had been there to vaporize her before she’d talked him out of it!)

Dipper couldn’t imagine what a timeline would be like, where Grunkle Stan and Great-Uncle Ford were mad enough with each other that they would have _fought_ during Weirdmageddon instead of just holding hands together with the rest of them. ...Well, at least Mabel had fixed it when she had, before it had become an even-worse problem. --And he’d do the same here if he could! (Only even earlier, if he could manage to pull it off.) He shook himself out of his thoughts with a smile. “Oh, Mabel is my twin sister.”

Stan seemed to take that without comment, turning back around in his chair. Dipper started to turn back to the vacuum cleaner, when Stan started speaking again, but something in Stan’s tone had him stopping what he was doing to look at him.

“You know, I don’t think the captain really did care about that lady,” Stan started out by saying, as he wrote out something on that paper he was working on. “Because if it had been the science guy who had to die to save the timeline, the captain never would have done it. He would have kept looking until he found another answer.” Dipper almost interjected there, but it felt like one of those moments where interrupting... “Because they were the two that really cared about each other.” Dipper blinked. “They were best friends and they had each other’s backs.” Oh. Oh, this was-- “No matter what, they never would have turned on each other,” and Dipper couldn’t hold back the wince, but luckily Stan wasn’t looking at him as he said it, with an undercurrent of anger in his tone more vicious than any Dipper had ever heard out of his Grunkle Stan about _anything_ , even _Gideon Gleeful_ , “Especially not just because one of them made a stupid mistake.” Oh. Oh, dear. “Stupid numbers!” Stan shouted, and Dipper stared at him as Stan turned in his chair and threw the pen at the floor.

And then Stan, breathing heavily and looking like he was about to burst into tears in frustration, lifted his head and froze as he looked up at Dipper, and Dipper looked back at him.

“Stanley, are you…” _okay?_ Dipper began, and then stalled out, because _of course_ he wasn’t okay, his brother had basically just exiled and disowned him, as far as Stan was concerned, and...

“That is do you want to, uh…” _talk about it?_ But if he had, then he would’ve said just that earlier, instead of lying about it, and… and...

It was at that point that Dipper realized that he didn’t know how to fix this.

He wasn’t Mabel. He couldn’t knit them both a pair of itchy sweaters, force them into the same room under the same roof and bully them into wearing them, make them talk using a sharing goat, and fix things with hugs. He just… couldn’t do it. He wasn’t _capable_ of that. It’d never work.

Dipper knew he had to say _something_ , but… he didn’t know how to fix this.

...But there was something that he did know how to fix.

Dipper pulled in a slow breath.

“Do you want to come hold this flashlight for me?” he asked of the angry, hurt and hurting young teenager in front of him. “I could show you what I’m working on.”

It was all he could think of. There had been times that he’d been frustrated, about school and schoolwork and everything -- the future and friends acting crazy and all the rest of it -- that just came to a head months after the fact, during the summer. And just going downstairs and working with Great-Uncle Ford had helped to calm him down. Just sitting next to him and working on a project... Even just _sitting next to him_ and being able to _breathe_...

He watched as Stan blinked a few times rapidly -- and whether he was trying to blink back the tears or just trying to figure out what Dipper had just asked him because it had come out of absolutely nowhere, Dipper wasn’t sure which, and he wasn’t about to guess.

But he let out a shaky mental breath of relief when Stan said, in a quiet and almost timid voice, “You want me to help you?”

Dipper nodded at him. “That’s what we’re doing, right? Helping each other out.”

Dipper didn’t catch every expression that flickered its way across Stan’s teenaged, far far too young face, but most of them registered as painful to him, and the last one solidified as resolve. He didn’t realize that he’d been holding his breath until he heard Stan mutter out firmly, “Yeah, I’ll help,” and he only started breathing again as the young angry teen, full of resolve, got up from his chair and walked over to where Dipper was crouching in from of the vacuum cleaner.

Dipper offered up the flashlight to Stan, and he grabbed it and crouched down himself and asked him where to shine it. Dipper told him.

And Dipper talked. He talked _a lot_. He wasn’t really sure of most of what he was saying (other than the accuracy of the information), or why, except that it just seemed like a good idea to try and get Stan’s mind off of things for awhile. So Dipper talked Stan through what he was doing, everything he was doing and why he was doing it _this_ way and not _that_ way, and with Stan’s help -- four hands really were better than two -- they got that prototype vacuum cleaner up and running in less than an hour. Stan really had done a good job on it up until he’d gotten stuck on the electronics of it.

And he was a seventeen-year-old kid who hadn’t even taken a single physics class, let alone anything on electromagnetism or electrical circuits, to know how to properly perform general electronics design. He wasn’t Edison or _Tesla_ , for god’s sake, to be figuring out how electricity worked from trial-and-error and experimentation -- how in the world had his Grunkle Stan managed to make a working corded _electric_ vacuum all by himself, on his own, in their own dimension, without even having graduated high school, let alone going to college? (Grunkle Stan might have done engine work on his own car growing up, sure -- but that has been a _gas-powered_ engine, _not_ an electric one like this vacuum had! This was insane!)

And as Dipper left for the evening that night for his own hotel room, a different thought crossed his mind that had never really crossed it before.

Mabel had told him that in their dimension’s original timeline, Stan hadn’t gone to see Ford until six years later than when he had in their new one. So in the original timeline, Stan had only come to the Shack after Ford had gotten in way way too deep with Bill, and maybe only a little while right before Ford had gone through the portal. Which meant that Stan couldn’t have known much of _anything_ about the portal, or how it operated, in the original timeline. He certainly hadn’t helped Ford put it together.

So how in the world had their Grunkle Stan managed to fix a broken _interdimensional portal_ all by himself, on his own, _the first time around?_

Dipper let out a shaky breath and passed a hand over his face, then let it drop, before he pushed himself forward and started walking again.

He had _so_ many questions for his Grunkle Stan when he got back… and he wasn’t even sure if his grunkle could answer them for him anymore.

This was _really_ messed up.

\---

The next day, Dipper woke up with his own resolve. He knew what he was going to do.

He was going to help teach Stan that he was not dumb.

Because his own Grunkle Stan wasn’t dumb. And this kid sure as hell wasn’t dumb, either!

Down on his luck? Hell, yes. Handed the worst and shortest stick imaginable because of a father that-- no, contemplating murder was _not_ a constructive use of his time right now, move on, Mason.

\--Handed the worst and shortest stick imaginable? Yes, absolutely. Did any of that matter _at all_ in the grand scheme of things? --Not if _Dipper_ had anything to say about it.

There was one thing that Dipper knew Grunkle Stan knew how to do, and do well, and it _wasn’t_ “just” selling: Grunkle Stan knew how to run a business, and _that_ was harder than it looked.

 _This_ Stan was already doing that, but struggling at it. --Of course he was! He didn’t have a stable living situation, he didn’t have the proper startup funding in reserve to live off of for the first two _years_ it took for most businesses to start actually making any money at all (out of the bleeding red and into the black), and people got college degrees in this sort of thing in order to be able to handle it right. _Multiple_ college degrees. And they _still_ sometimes failed at it.

Hell, people were accountants for a living just to handle business expenses, and Dipper had seen Grunkle Stan’s bookkeeping for the Shack on more than one occasion. That thing had been a thing of beauty, once he’d had it explained it to him (and Mabel had thought so, too). It had been esoteric as anything without the explanation, but with it? It had all made sense.

If what Stan had been working on last night on that paper had been his business expenses, trying to put everything in line -- and from the glance Dipper had gotten at the scribbles and the pile of receipts, it looked like it had -- it was no small wonder that he’d been frustrated as hell over it! Dipper would have been, too, starting from scratch and with no idea how he was supposed to organize it!

Well, it wasn’t as if that wasn’t fixable. If Stan could understand gross and net profits after a minute-and-a-half of explanation, he could sure as hell grasp the basics of what Dipper was going to show him that he could do next.

So the next night Dipper walked in with five cartons of Chinese food, a ledger, and a plan.

And he taught Stan exactly what Grunkle Stan had taught him.

“You catch on fast,” Dipper told Stan as the teenager took over after the second line of calculations Dipper had shown him, making a grand total of zero mistakes over five lines in the next ten seconds. “I’m impressed.” Frankly, he kind of _was_ impressed. He was pretty sure that it had taken both him and Mabel longer to get that quick at it.

“Heh. First time anyone’s ever said that about me,” Stan said to him, and Dipper blinked at him -- first at the blush Stan had gotten at the praise, and again as the meaning and implications of what Stan had _actually_ just said hit him.

“Oh.” Dipper pulled in a breath. “Well.” It took Dipper a moment to collect his thoughts.

And then Dipper turned towards Stan with a sober expression, put his hand on Stan’s shoulder, and looked him straight in the eye as he said exactly what he had thought in that moment:

“Those people must have all been a bunch of idiots.”

And Dipper meant _every word_.

\---


End file.
